The Broken Soldier

I received an email from COL Roger Soldano on Friday. He wants to discuss my “concerns.” I did a bit research on COL Soldano, and he seems, from what little information I can find on him, an accomplished senior officer. Maybe he will be able to help.

I was tempted to call him on Friday, but thought better of it. I’ve not been sleeping very well lately. Worse than usual. Pain, weird neurological symptoms, and withdrawal are likely culprits. The constant worry my ‘comrades’’ bumbling have created doesn’t help. My fear, a fear I shared with the COL, is not having the energy to tip-toe around sensitive issues. From experience, frank discussions of Army procedural and executional failings are not well received by NCOs and officers. In the past, I’ve been threatened with everything from punishment to possibly losing my future VA benefits for doing so. In terms of trouble and strife, my canteen cup runneth over. It’s difficult for me, even when I’m not already miserable and pissed off, to argue an obvious point. Carrying on the medical and financial entitlements equivalent of ‘prove to me my hand exists’ with an ACU-clad idiot is likely to end badly. I don’t have the patience or the energy or the will to refrain from hitting said hand with a hammer to prove my point. Enter fear stage right.

Our discussion will very likely center on procedure. This has been a common tactic. Deny benefits because I’ve not satisfied some unsatisfiable level of “required” documentation. But this approach belies the obvious. For sake of discussion, even if my wife, my doctor, and I have done everything wrong, a point I’m not conceding, I have had an approved Line of Duty investigation for five months. I have still not received approval for my doctor’s full treatment plan or incapacitation pay beyond the month of August. If the Guard were truly interested in granting approval of benefits those in power claim I am eligible to receive, and had sincere concern for my present and future physical and financial well-being, they would have found a way, regardless of unsatisfied procedural salmagundi, to get said benefits to me. This is a point I shouldn’t have to argue. That I don’t have these things should be sufficient argument in and of itself.

But I’m holding out hope, against my experience and sense of distrust created by it, this COL means what he says. “Jimison, my responsibility is to listen to you and help if I can.”  We’ll see.